The Fight for Control of African Women's Mobility in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1900-1939 Author(S): Teresa A

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The Fight for Control of African Women's Mobility in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1900-1939 Author(s): Teresa A. Barnes Source: Signs, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Spring, 1992), pp. 586-608 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174624 Accessed: 28-07-2015 18:40 UTC

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This content downloaded from 158.121.249.50 on Tue, 28 Jul 2015 18:40:02 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Fightfor Control of African Women'sMobility in Colonial Zimbabwe,1900-1939

Teresa A. Barnes

S IN T H E RE ST of southernAfrica, physical mobility was a crucial issue in the relationshipbetween the colonial rulers and the ruledin colonial Zimbabwe (or southernRhodesia, as it was named by Britishsettlers). Denying certain groups of people access to certainspaces was a cornerstoneof policy.Thus some places could be ideologized as "white," as spaces that Africanpeople could enteronly temporarilyand at certaintimes. Within these spaces, Africanpeople were lured or herded,supervised and regulated,depend- ingon thelabor needsof theeconomy. Spaces in whichthey were allowed some internalmobility were designatedas "nativekraals," "reserves," or "locations" and were perceivedas primitive,practically foreign territory.1Physical and ideological barrierswere erectedbetween these two sets of spaces to ensure that it was only on the state's termsthat the races-and the sexes-would meet. The colonial political economy was obsessed with the mobilityof indigenouspeople. It was concerned,first, to restrictmovement from "native" spaces to "white" spaces and, second,to keep trackof people as theydid move around the colony.Cumbersome pass laws of thetype for

All filereferences are to correspondenceheld in the National Archivesof Zimbabwe in Harare. I would like to thankJohn Pape, Jane Parpart,Tsuneo Yoshikune,and the anonymousSigns readersfor their comments on earlierdrafts of thisarticle. 1 These termsrefer to Africanrural households, rural communities, and segregated urban residentialareas. SouthernRhodesia was colonized in the 1890s by Britishand South Africancapitalists of the BritishSouth AfricaCompany; it was givento whiteset- tlersfor self-rule after 1923. By 1930, the majorityof the most fertileregions had been alienatedto settlerfarmers; African families were confinedto dryand infertileNative Reserves.Until the 1940s the SouthernRhodesian economy mainly consisted of small, relativelyunprofitable ventures in miningand agriculture;there was littleor no industry (see Ian Phimister,An Economic and Social Historyof Zimbabwe, 1890-1948 [Lon- don: Longman,1988]). This articleis mainlyconcerned with the relationshipsbetween Africanpeople and the colonial state; the terms"men" and "women" thereforerefer, unlessotherwise noted, to Africanpeople.

[Signs:Journal of Womenin Cultureand Society1992, vol. 17, no. 3] ?1992 by The Universityof Chicago.All rightsreserved. 0097-9740/92/1703-0001$01.00 586 SIGNS Spring 1992

This content downloaded from 158.121.249.50 on Tue, 28 Jul 2015 18:40:02 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions WOMEN IN COLONIAL ZIMBABWE Barnes whichSouth Africa is so justifiablyfamous were the bureaucratic expres- sionof this obsession. The first pass lawswere applied to Africanmen in SouthernRhodesia almost immediately after the establishment ofthe colonialorder in 1890 andits first successful defense against African revolt in 1896-97. Bythe early 1930s, an Africanman was requiredto havean identificationcertificate that also servedas a recordof employment;he neededanother pass to enterany town (by definition a white space), and oncein a town,yet another pass to be outsidethe "location" between the hoursof nine at nightand sixin themorning. African women, however, werenot subject to theselaws.2 The issueof mobilitythus provides an excellentopportunity to studythe gendered nature of colonial economic policiesand ofpolitical relations inside African households. Withinthe colonial order, men of working age weretransformed into laborerswho were not paid enough to supportfamilies; women of work- ingage weretransformed into laborers who supportedfamilies without pay.3Many of thewives and daughtersin earlySouthern Rhodesia dis- sentedfrom the new economic subservience imposed upon them. Their dissenttook the form of mobility.They were not unique in thiseffort; recentstudies have shown that African women in theearly years of the twentiethcentury exercised a newfoundmobility all oversouthern and centralAfrica, provoking the development of variousschemes to tryto controlthem.4

2 ChiefNative Commissioner(hereafter CNC) summaryof pass laws to Native Af- fairsConference, 1933, S1564. The historiographyof Africanwomen in SouthernRho- desia is stillin its infancy.Published studies include Teresa Barnes, "To Raise a Hornet's Nest: The Effectof Early Resistanceto Passes forWomen in South Africaon the Pass Laws in Colonial Zimbabwe," Agenda,no. 5 (1989), 27-41; TeresaBarnes and Ever- joyceWin, To Livea BetterLife: An Oral Historyof Womenin ColonialHarare (Harare: Baobab Books, 1991); Nancy Folbre,"Patriarchal Social Formationsin Zimba- bwe,"in Patriarchyand Class:African Women in theHome and theWorkforce, ed. Sharon Stichterand JaneParpart (Boulder, Colo.: Westview,1988). ElizabethSchmidt has publishedseveral studies; see "Farmers,Hunters and Gold-Washers:A Reevaluation of Women's Roles in Precolonialand Colonial Zimbabwe,"African Economic History, no. 17 (1988), 45-80, "NegotiatedSpaces and ContestedTerrain: Men, Women and the Law in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1890-1939," Journalof SouthernAfrican Studies 16, no. 4 (1990): 622-48, "Patriarchy,Capitalism, and the Colonial State in Zimbabwe," Signs: Journalof Womenin Cultureand Society16, no. 4 (1991): 732-56. 3 The changingposition of women in new Africanfamily formations is discussedin Margot Lovett,"Gender Relations,Class Formation,and the Colonial State in Africa," in Womenand the State in Africa,ed. JaneParpart and KatherineStaudt (Boulder, Colo.: Rienner,1989), 23-46, esp. 28. 4 CherylWalker, "Gender and the Developmentof the MigrantLabour System,"and Phil Bonner,"Desirable or UndesirableBasotho Women?Liquor, Prostitutionand the Migrationof Basotho Women to the Rand, 1920-1945," both in Womenand Gender in SouthernAfrica to 1945, ed. CherylWalker (Cape Town: David Philip),168-96 (esp. 180-81) and 221-50 (esp. 245-47), respectively;Belinda Bozzoli, "Marxism, Femi- nismand South AfricanStudies," Journal of SouthernAfrican Studies 9, no. 2 (1983): 139-71, esp. 151. Deborah Gaitskellmakes briefmention of runawaybrides in Natal in the earlytwentieth century in "Wailingfor Purity," in Industrialisationand Social Change in South Africa,ed. Shula Marks and RichardRathbone (London: Longman, Spring 1992 SIGNS 587

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Elizabeth Schmidt'srecent study of patriarchyand capitalismargues that the SouthernRhodesian state made a clear alliance with African patriarchyto control Africanwomen's mobility.5I hold, rather,that SouthernRhodesian labor policieswere not so straightforwardand were fraughtwith contradiction.On one hand, the state did forceworking Africanmen into the relativepowerlessness of migrantlabor while si- multaneouslybuttressing those men's power over youngermen and all women. At the same time,however, state policies punishedand tacitly encouraged the women who traveledaround the colony in search of rewardingavenues fortheir labor. The state said one thingbut did another (partlybecause it was forcedto do so). While it acknowledged men's claims over women, it regardeditself as women's highermaster and reservedthe power to overridemen's claims. Because of such contradictions,this study will show,restricting the mobilityof womenhad becomean unworkablepolicy by themid-1930s. Pro- vidingideological and practicalbarriers to keep womenin ruralareas may havesupported both the men who werebecoming migrant workers and the systemthat forced them into it. But therewere other spaces in thecolonial politicaleconomy. Working men in themines and towns,low-paid migrants thoughthey were, stillwanted cooked food, clean clothing,and sexual services;as LuiseWhite has recentlywritten, they wanted "the comfortsof home."6Colonialism did not transformthe expectation that these comforts shouldbe providedby women.Therefore, as I will discuss,mobile African women filledthese voids by movingto and froacross the barriersof the supposedlyall-white and all-maletowns of SouthernRhodesia.

Immoralityand mobility,1890-1920 Two major factorscombined to temperthe impoverishmentof rural Africanfamilies in the firstthirty years of colonial rule in Southern Rhodesia. First,in manyparts of the new colony,an Africanpeasantry

1982), 338-57, esp. 342. Women in centraland easternAfrica also soughtgreater mobilityin the earlycolonial years (see Martha Hay and Marcia Wright,eds., African Womenand the Law: HistoricalPerspectives [Boston: Boston UniversityPress, 1982], xiii; Martin Chanock, Law, Customand Social Order: The Colonial Experiencein Malawi and Zambia [Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1985]; Ivy Schuster,New Womenof Lusaka [Palo Alto, Calif.: Mayfield,1979], 19; JaneParpart, "Class and Genderon the Copperbelt,"in Womenand Class in Africa,ed. Claire Robertsonand Iris Berger[New York: Holmes & Meier, 1986], 141-60, esp. 143-44; Lovett,28-29; Marjorie Mbilinyi,"Runaway Wives in Colonial Tanganyika:Forced Labour and Forced Marriagein Rungwe District,1919-61," InternationalJournal of the Sociologyof Law 16 [February1988]: 1-29, esp. 7-11; Luise White,The Comfortsof Home: Prostitu- tion in Colonial Nairobi [Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press,1990], chap. 2). 5 Schmidt,"Patriarchy, Capitalism, and the Colonial State in Zimbabwe," 756. 6 Furtherresearch is needed to determinewhether the SouthernRhodesian state,like thatof colonial Kenya,was more unable than unwilling,as I have portrayedhere, to dictatesubstantially the termsof urban settlement(see White,The Comfortsof Home).

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This content downloaded from 158.121.249.50 on Tue, 28 Jul 2015 18:40:02 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions WOMEN IN COLONIAL ZIMBABWE Barnes thatgrew cash crops for sale to thesettlers emerged from the ecological and wartimedisasters of theturn of thecentury. The secondfactor was the recruitmentof foreignworkers for the new enterprisesof Cecil Rhodes'sBritish South Africa Company when direct forced labor was stoppedlocally by the British government.7 The importanceof women's laborin thisperiod is indicatedby thepassage of successivepieces of legislationby the colonialstate that attempted to restructureAfrican familyrelationships. These were labor laws thattried to enticeAfrican meninto the labor force partly by reassuringthem that the women at homeremained under their control. The legislationalso aimedto struc- turethe cheap reproduction of theAfrican labor force. As MartinCha- nockstates in hiswork on colonialZambia and Malawi,it is clearthat theintervention ofthe state in thesematters involved the manipulation, ifnot the manufacture, of "tradition"in a swiftlychanging social and economicenvironment.8 The most important of these laws made African womeninto permanent legal minors, codified polygamy and thesystem of bridewealthpayments known as lobola, and initiateda systemof registrationof non-Christianmarriages.9 In tandemwith the state's legislative efforts to regulatewomen's labor camenew ideological constructions ofAfrican women. At the turn of the century,white settlers believed that African women should be rescued fromwhat they perceived as heavysocioeconomic bonds imposed by Africanmen. As the colonialorder spread, however, the blamefor a risingincidence of problemssuch as venerealdisease and prostitution becamewholly assigned to a "naturalimmorality" of African women. A typicalformulation of thisperspective was thatthe African woman had become"defiant and obstinant... often a slaveto grosspassion, deaf to all reason."10Women who crossedthe boundaries of respectable behav-

7 Robin Palmer,"Agricultural History of Rhodesia," in Roots of Rural Poverty,ed. Robin Palmerand Neil Parsons (Berkeley:University of CaliforniaPress, 1977); Phimis- ter (n. 1 above), chap. 2; GiovanniArrighi, "Labour Suppliesin HistoricalPerspective," in Essays in the PoliticalEconomy of Africa,ed. GiovanniArrighi and JohnSaul (New York: MonthlyReview Press,1973), 189. 8 Chanock, chaps. 8, 10, 11; TerenceRanger, "The Inventionof Traditionin Central Africa,"in The Inventionof Tradition,ed. TerenceRanger and Eric Hobsbawm (Cam- bridge:Cambridge University Press, 1984). 9 WelshmanNcube, "Released fromLegal Minority:The Legal Age of MajorityAct in Zimbabwe," in Womenand Law in SouthernAfrica, ed. Alice Armstrong(Harare: Zimbabwe PublishingHouse, 1987), 193-206, esp. 194; CNC letterto ChiefSecretary, Salisbury,March 26, 1900, N3/17/4/1.Early efforts to interveneon the side of women by makingtheir consent necessary for any registeredmarriage were abandoned by 1916 in the face of male protests(see Diana Jeater,"Marriage, Perversion and Power: The Constructionof Moral Discourse in SouthernRhodesia, 1890-1930" [Ph.D. diss., Trin- ityCollege, OxfordUniversity, 1990]; Schmidt,"Negotiated Spaces and ContestedTer- rain [n. 2 above], 624-39). 10 Schmidt,"Negotiated Spaces and ContestedTerrain," 623; AssistantNative Com- missioner(hereafter NC) Wankieto CNC, May 7, 1914, N3/17/2.For a studyof these issues as theypertain to women in South Africa,see KatherineEales, "Popular Repre-

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ior (which,of course,was in theprocess of beingdefined) increasingly ran therisk of beinglabeled "immoral"and diseased-evil vesselsof contami- nation.11 Women's exerciseof mobilityin the earlycolonial yearsprecipitated problemswithin African households. Some of these are reflectedin the followingtestimony of a disgruntledhusband in a divorcecase heardin the government-runcivil court in thenorth central district of Mtoko in 1912:

Soon aftermy marriageto Kurewhawas registered,I proceeded to Salisburywith [her]. Whilst living in SalisburyKurewha disappeared fromhome on severaloccasions. On one occasion,she disappeared fromhome and was about 14 days,until I foundher at theRailway Station,attempting to board thetrain for Hartley. On anotherocca- sion she leftme and was absentfor a few days. I foundher at the TransportCamp. On a thirdoccasion she leftme and I foundher at Homan's residence.She was livingwith a nativecalled Shilling.My wifehates me, and is constantlywandering about and attemptingto run away.I feelthat she will get away forgood one day. I therefore decidedto returnher home to herfather and applyfor a divorce.

Kurewha defendedherself against these chargesby saying,"I only left home once without the knowledge of my husband, that was on the occasion I attemptedto go to Hartley.My husband was always ill- treatingme. I hate him and will not be his wife any longer. On the occasions I went and lived at Homan's and the TransportCamp I was stayingwith friendsand relatives."12 Many disputesarose over women in this earlyperiod. In 1911 and 1912, forexample, approximately 52 percentof thecivil cases broughtin the Mtoko court were claims for compensationby husbands against othermen who had allegedlycommitted adultery with their wives. In the 1910-19 period, approximately90 percentof the civil cases were do- mesticdisputes involving women-adultery, divorce, return or payment of lobola, or seductiondamages. This was similarto the situationin neighboringNorthern Rhodesia.13

sentationsof Black Women on the Rand and Their Impact on the Developmentof Influx Controls,1924-1937" (paper presentedat the HistoryWorkshop, University of the Witwatersrand,February 1990). 11 I am indebtedto LynetteJackson for the idea of the increasinglyideological colonial associationof Africanwomen withthe metaphorof disease (personalcommunica- tion,June 21, 1991). 12 "Shambamutovs. Kurehwa and father,Case 44/1912" (Court of the NC Mtoko, Civil cases, 1910-22, S1004). 13 Ibid.; JaneParpart, "Sexuality and Power on the Zambian Copperbelt:1926- 1964," in Stichterand Parpart,eds. (n. 2 above), 115-38, esp. 118.

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By the beginningof the FirstWorld War, African male eldersin rural areas were startingto voice theircomplaints about new, unrulyfemale behaviorsuch as Kurewha's.In 1914 the chiefsand eldersof the north- easterntowns of Rusape and Umtaliwere reportedby the local govern- mentrepresentative as saying,"Our fathershave asked, we have asked, and you do not help us in theonly thing that is vitalto our tribeand our family."They were pleading for restrictionson mobile women-girls who ran away fromhome to escape arrangedmarriages, and married womenwho, like Kurewha,were definingnew livesfor themselves in the minesand towns of the colony.14 In 1916 the state triedto answer the complaintsof these and other Africanpatriarchs with the Native AdulteryPunishment Ordinance. Adulteryin rural Africancommunities was linked to economic conditions throughthe expandingmigrant labor system.More foreignmen were travelingthrough the colony as theirproportion in the Southern Rhodesian work force rose. Like theirindigenous counterparts, these migrantlaborers wanted women to provide them with domestic and sexual services;to obtainthem, these men were willing to makepayments directlyto an individualwoman (ratherthan bridewealthpayments to hermale relatives).In a changingeconomic climate, this new competition for femalelabor seems oftento have favoredthe foreigners,and some marriedwomen became migrant laborers in theirown right,leaving rural areas and familycontrol to earnmoney in minecompounds and towns.1s While colonial officialsfelt that the new adulterylaw would be "greatlyappreciated" by theAfrican men of the colony,they defended it most ardentlyon the groundsthat it would admirablyserve their own economicinterests: "Many Nativesare deterredfrom leaving their homes

14 TerenceRanger, "Women in the Politicsof Makoni District,1890-1980" (Univer- sityof Manchester,1981, typescript),13; Diana Jeater,"Mothers and Prostitutes:The Reconstructionof AfricaGender Relationships in SouthernRhodesia, 1898-1923" (Universityof Zimbabwe, 1987, typescript),10-13; LegislativeCouncil of Southern Rhodesia Debates, 1916. Rural parentsalso complainedabout the loss of youngmen's labor: "They [boysworking for wages] are lost controlof and theygo wherethey like. ... Parentscomplain bitterly to-day ... because theycould have done work forthem at home" (H. S. Keigwin,oral evidenceto the Native Labour Commission,1921, A3/3/19/3,2:391). There are few referencesin archivalmaterial to what Africanmoth- ers thoughtabout theseissues. Rangermentions one motherof Makoni districtin the 1920s who triedto hang herselfin protestwhen Catholic missionariesgave shelterto her in the Politicsof Makoni 15runaway daughter ("Women District,"9). In contrastto similarlegislation in NorthernRhodesia, thisordinance made adul- terya criminalrather than civil offense(Parpart, "Sexuality and Power on the Zambian Copperbelt,"119). The ordinanceremained in forceuntil 1960 (ErnestMittlebeeler, Af- rican Customand WesternLaw: The Developmentof Rhodesian CriminalLaw forAfri- cans [New York: AfricanaPublishing House, 1976], 124-25). Rangerpoints out that no attentionwas paid to the traditionsof women in the framingof thisor any other ordinance("The Inventionof Traditionin CentralAfrica" [n. 8 above], 258; see also Charlesvan Onselen, Chibaro [London: Pluto Press,1976], 103).

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to seek employmentout of fearthat theirwives will misconductthem- selvesduring the husband's absences.Others leave work beforethe time theywould have in the ordinarycourse, owing to theirdomestic affairs requiringtheir personal attention due to the misconductof the woman. Surelyif for no otherreason thana selfishmotive, we shouldendeavor to remedya stateof affairswhich is of vitalimportance to thewhole of our commercialand economic fabric."16The SouthernRhodesian government,however, did not launch an intensiveattack on the mobilityof Africanwomen in thisera. Althoughwomen were includedin Ordinance 16 of 1901 (providingfor the registrationand issuingof passes to all Africansin urbanemployment), its wording showed that the state had no objectionto thepresence of marriedwomen in towns; such womenwere assumed to be under the controlof theirhusbands.17 Nearly threede- cades later a governmentlegal officerrevealed that employedwomen were not beingpunished for failing to securecontract of servicepasses, and that theirpreemployment medical examination(as providedfor in Ordinance 15 of 1918) was rarelyinsisted on.18 A day-to-daypractice thus developedthat allowed the women who did prythemselves out of the ruralareas a wider degreeof freedomthan eitherthe letteror spirit of the law indicated. The magnitudeof women's exerciseof mobilityin thisperiod is difficultto judge. On one hand, the 1916 adulterylaw-specifically aimed at keeping married women in their villages under their husbands' control-provides indirectevidence that a noticeable numberof rural womenwere seeking other markets for their domestic labor. On theother hand,the numbers of mobilewomen were still relatively small by theend of thethird decade of colonial rule,as indicatedby the controversy about a 1918 proposal to requirewomen to carrypasses in orderto travel;The governmentwas asked by an associationof whitefarmers in the central Mazoe area to considerissuing these passes, "thus assistingthe police in controllingcrime." Government officials replied that they did not favor 16 Superintendentof Natives (hereafter,SON) Salisbury,letter to CNC, May 12, 1914, N3/17/2;Schmidt, "Negotiated Spaces and ContestedTerrain" (n. 2 above), 623- 24. 17 Ordinance 16 of 1901, "An Ordinanceto Providefor the Registrationof certain Native Servantsand the Issue of Passes to Natives WithinTownships," H2/9/2. This may have been a gestureallowing foreign laboring men to bringtheir wives fromsurrounding territories.This ordinancesets the precedentof the statetreating married urban women differentlythan unmarriedwomen. Women who were marriedby "Christianrites" tendedto be associatedwith missioneducation and were thuspotentially of a higher class than theiruneducated sisters. This may have been a factorin a preferentialre- sponse fromthe state enjoyedby educatedwomen marriedto membersof an emerging elite in SouthernRhodesia's towns (see Tsuneo Yoshikune,"Black Migrantsin a White City: Colonial Salisbury,1890-1925" [Ph.D. diss.,University of Zimbabwe, 1991], chap. 3). 18 Secretary,Law Departmentletter to StaffOfficer, British South AfricaPolice (here- afterBSAP), September5, 1928, S138/37.

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such a measure;significantly, one responded,"It is quite withinthe boundsof possibilitythat the natives themselves may in futureask that themovement of women be restrictedbut I am notaware of any reasons whichwould justify a measureof thissort at thepresent time."19 But timeswere changing; white settler groups thought they had reasonfor concerneven if the officials of theNative Department decided to ignore them.The Missionary Women's Conference of 1917 warned of a "tideof immoralitysweeping over the country as neverbefore." And the follow- ing year,the missionaryJohn White commented on the accelerating movementof African women into towns. "Lately," he said,"an increas- ingnumber of Native girls have been coming to town,"many of whom, he addedominously, "are driveninto the worst form of temptation."20 Becausethere are fewdocuments that chronicle the numbers and in- tentionsof the African women who came into the colony's towns in this period,the words of theprotagonists from a 1918 domesticdispute in Salisbury,the capital city, are all themore significant. In that year, Walter Chipwaya,a messengerof the Native Department, was suedfor divorce by his wife,Mary. She seemsto havebeen a determinedsoul, finding domesticwork and accommodationfor herself and heryoung son in townafter Mr. Chipwaya deserted them. In a letterto himshe indicated, however,that these were steps reluctantly taken: "O heartof mine dont be hardon me I am onlya womanand we womanwe are onlystrong whenthers a manto leadus ... Whenand if you throw me away I must needsto go to thedogs," she wrote. Her new urban employment was not at all to theliking of Mr. Chipwaya, for whom the town was theplace "in whichall abominationand distruction lies."21 The evidence suggests that Mrs. Chipwaya'sdecision to take the urbanoption in her economic distresswas indicativeof a growingtrend.

Women'smobility in the 1920s The 1920s, describedas theera of the "politicaltriumph of white agriculture,"22radically altered the socioeconomic position of the South- 19 Quoted in CNC circularletter to SONs, March 8, 1918; SON Bulawayo to CNC, March12, 1918,N3/17/5. 20 Ranger,"Women in the Politicsof the Makoni District"(n. 14 above), 12; Kirsten England,"A PoliticalEconomy of Black Female Labour in Zimbabwe, 1900-1980" (B.A. Honors diss., of 41. 21 University Manchester,1982), Spellingand punctuationerrors are fromoriginal correspondence (M. Chipwaya letterto W. Chipwaya,n.d.; W. Chipwaya,letters to M. Chipwaya, 1918; Court of the Assistant NC Salisbury,Civil Cases, 1916-23, NSM 2/1/1).Walter Chipwaya gained prominencein Africanpolitical circles in Salisburyin the 1920s and early 1930s (Tsuneo Yoshikune,"Strike Action and Self-HelpAssociations: Zimbabwean WorkerProtest and Cultureafter World War I," Journalof SouthernAfrican Studies 15, no. 3 [1989]: 440- 68, esp. 459). 22 Palmer(n. 7 above), 239.

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ernRhodesian African peasantry. The tendencyof Africanmen to engage in migrantlabor was catalyzedby low pricesfor their maize and cattle matchedwith continuing tax obligationsand postwarinflation.23 African women, for theirpart, came to play increasinglyimportant and varied rolesin SouthernRhodesia's economiclife, as illustratedby a 1924 state- ment froma rural official.Women's resultingnew, assertiveattitudes were firmlylinked in his mindwith what he viewed as theirimmorality: "The nativewomen of the presentgeneration are, as a matterof fact, assertingtheir rights under our law to quite an extraordinaryextent. They claim ownershipof cattle and goods purchasedwith moneythey have earned whichhas been givento them,the rightto selecttheir husbands, and applications for divorce are far more common amongst women than men. The standardof moralityamongst native women is exceedinglylow and if the bonds of custom are relaxed still further,it would only lead to more infidelityon theirpart."24 As thestate increased the pace ofland alienationand favoredsettler over Africanproducers in the 1920s, stayingafloat must have been a difficult processfor African families. But therewas one traditionalsource of wealth thatfathers and lineageheads could counton: bridewealthpayments from the marriagesof theirdaughters. By the early 1930s, ruralofficials were remarkingthat fathers and guardianshad cometo regardthese payments- once onlya symbolicexchange of giftsbetween families-as a fairmeans of accumulatingcash to pay taxes and meetother financial obligations. This changerepresented the commodification of a woman'svalue to herfamily.25 Her residencein a town,with its potential for engaging in "all abomination and destruction,"'was likelyto lower the bridewealthher male relatives could demandfrom potential suitors; town residencealso would restrict theircontrol over the marriageprocess. Therefore, up to the mid-1920s fathersseem most often to havedecided that a daughter'slabor, her potential bridewealth,and the maintenanceof "tradition"were more valuable than the earningsof yet anotherurban migrant.Thus the ChiefNative Commissionerobserved in 1927 that"among what mightbe termedthe 'back-veld'Natives the custom of lobola will continueto be a deterrentto Nativegirls seeking employment."26

23 Arrighi(n. 7 above), 206. 24 NC Selukwe letterto CNC, April23, 1924, S138/50. 25 AssistantNC Goromonzito CNC, February10, 1932, S138/47. A considerable amountof intergenerationaltension between men on thisissue is indicatedby the mid- 1930s. In 1934, 58 percentof the pettycivil cases in the Goromonzidistrict had been broughtby sons-in-lawalleging the failureof theirfathers-in-law to refundbridewealth paymentsafter the desertionof theirwives (annual reportof the NC Salisbury,1934, 10, S1563). 26 CNC letterto Secretaryto the Premier(Native Affairs),February 21, 1927, S482/117/40.

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Theevidence suggests that women themselves saw the issue differently. Doubtlesslyspurred by adverse economic circumstances, African women traveledaround the colony in increasingnumbers in the1920s. Reports aboutAfrican women on themove came from many levels of colonial society.Conditions to thenorth of thecolony were bad enoughto send a "steadyand increasinginflux" of womeninto Southern Rhodesia; in 1921 an officialreported that there were five hundred such transients in his district.27Missionaries and governmentofficials alike reported that therewas a "steadilyincreasing flow of women, married and single, from thekraals to thetowns and minecompounds."28 A NativeDepartment conferenceof 1927 observedthat "natives in the reservesand other places[have] pointed out thefreedom with which women can proceed, forinstance, from Marandellas to the Salisburylocation or Salisbury town;they live here for a weekor a monthor longer,and thereis no checkon theirmovements, and nobody questions what they are doing in town ... Whatare these people doing here? They cannot be sellingtheir grainor chickens."29Although Kirsten England argues that women res- identsin thetowns were unlikely to haveearned a livingsolely by selling produceor preparedfoodstuffs, there is evidenceto suggestthat periodic salesof various produce in urbanareas were important in the incomes of womenof nearby rural areas.30 An informantborn in theSalisbury area around1905 has recalledher mother saying that in heryouth, girls used to walkto Salisburyfrom a nearbymission station to sellcharcoal.31 In thesame area, improvements in breeding chickens and cultivatingtoma- toesfor urban markets were noted in 1921.32The observationfrom the 1927 conferencecited above indicatesthat the sightof ruralwomen hawkingproduce in Salisburywas fairlycommon; and in 1930 "young girlsfrom ... nearbykraals wandering around the town selling their goods"were again a matterof complaintin Salisbury.33 By themid-1920s evidence began to surfacethat there were women forwhom mobility was a matterof sellingmore than vegetables. Alarm overa perceivedincrease in prostitutionby African women evinced an-

27 ActingNC Shamva to NC Mazoe, March 3, 1921, N3/22/7.Perhaps something like the flowof male migrantssouthward to seek areas of higherwages, as describedby van Onselen (n. 15 above), also operatedregionally for women 28 (227-36). Quoted in England (n. 17 above), 38; NC Hartleyto CNC, February28, 1924, S138/50. On ruralwomen's economicroles, see Schmidt,"Farmers, Hunters and Gold- Washers" (n. 2 57-67. 29 above), Salisburyconference of SONs and NCs, 1927, 53, S235/493. 30 44. 31 England, Mrs. Maggie Masamba, interviewedat EpworthMission by myselfand Ms. Ever- joyce Win, 1989. 32 April20, Annual reportof the NC Goromonzi,1921, N9/1/24. 33 Oral evidenceof JohnMoeketsi to the Native AffairsCommission of Inquiryinto the SalisburyNative Municipal Location, 1930, 25, S85.

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otherstage in the developmentof household strugglesand thus in the migrantlabor economy. The annual reportsof the native commissioner(NC) of the Gor- omonzi districtfrom 1920 to 1925 expressedsatisfaction with the work- ings of the 1916 adulterylaw. It "continuedto have the desiredeffect," judged by the appreciationof "the individualmale nativewhose women now ... are not so temptedto run off."34But in 1926 therewas a hint of troublebrewing. Government officials recommended, inter alia, that amendmentsshould be made in the marriageand adulterylaws so as to make it a criminaloffence for a man to "harbor" a woman for sexual purposeswithout the consent of herguardian.35 And in 1927 theissue of Africanwomen's mobilityburst out into the open. The Mazoe farmers' proposal of 1918 appeared again in a conferencemotion recommending "that owing to the widespread state of immoralityand prostitution amongstnative women," mandatory traveling passes forwomen should be introduced.One officialhoped thatsuch a measurewould "be a check on thepresent unrestricted movement of theloose nativewomen." In the ensuingdiscussion, the NC Goromonzistated,

I have more troubleover thisimmoral state of affairsthan almost any Native Commissionerin the country.The Mashonas in this districtare prostitutesalmost to thelast woman,either professional or occasional. A largenumber, when theywant money,go out and earn it at once. They are encouragedto do so by all theirrelatives as long as theyalways go home again ... the greatcomplaint we hear fromnatives is in regardto thewomen who geton trainsand run away to otherparts of the territorywhere we cannot get at them.... What [thechiefs of the district]said was thatthey would like the women to be preventedfrom running clean away and get- tingon trains.36

This suggeststhat the precise location of thetrouble spot in the domestic strugglewas shiftingfrom the mereprevention of women's mobilityto controlof its proceeds. Althoughfiltered through the perspectivesof the Native Department, in thesecomments we can discernthe outlinesof a mountingmale con- cern not so much over women's earningcash, but over what theydid withit. In response,official efforts to controlwomen began to focusnot simplyon presentingbarriers to theirindependent exercise of mobility

34 Annual reportsof the NC Goromonzi,1920-25, S2076; N9/1/24-26; S235/502-3. 35 Conferenceof NCs, 1926, S235/493; Mittlebeeler(n. 15 above), 126. 36 Verbatimreport, Conference of SONs and NCs, 1927, 52, S235/493.

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butalso on gettingthem to returnhome once they had left.In 1930 the chiefnative commissioner (CNC) reportedthat measures had beenre- centlyinstituted to discouragewomen and girlsfrom entering towns,37 probablyreferring to an increaseduse of Section 51 ofthe Native Affairs Act,under which an urbanwoman committed an offenseif she refused to returnto herrural area whenordered to do so bya ruralchief or a NativeDepartment official. The wordsof an Africangovernment em- ployeedescribe what happened when one womanin thetown of Umtali refusedto go homeas orderedand was prosecuted under this act in 1933: "On 1stDecember 1933 I was presentat thenative commissioner's office whenaccused was takenbefore the Acting Native Commissioner, Mr. Coley,who orderedher to returnto herkraal and notto returnto the townof Umtali or commonage.... [He] providedan escortof four men to takeher to herChief Mutasa and fromthere to takeher back to her guardian'skraal. On leavingthe Office ... theaccused picked up stones andthrew them at theescorts saying at thesame time that she refused to returnto herkraal." The accused,"Anna alias Flora,"was sentencedto a fineof thirty shillings or one month'simprisonment with hard labor.38 A decadelater, the dichotomy between the movements of "respectable" women-presumablythose who exercised their cash-earning pow- ersto thesatisfaction of theirguardians-and the immoral throng was stillbeing strongly articulated. According to theliberal missionary A. S. Cripps,commenting on thepassage of the 1936 NativeRegistration Act, "It is truethat many complaints have been made at meetingsof some of ourBantu Societies about non-control of women but it would seem that thesewere not aimed[at those]who comeinto town for buying and sellingbut at womenand girls who come and stay and make their homes in thelocations without proper husbands and thatthe demand for con- trolwas forthe controlof them."39Thus, not all groupsof mobile womenwere acting against the wishes of their guardians; and bythe end ofthe decade ending in 1936 therewere women who were supplementing ruralfinances to such an extentthat a threateneddisruption in their tradingactivities brought out eventhe voices of therural patriarchy in defenseof theirmobility.40

37 Annual reportof the CNC, 1930, S138/1. 38 "The King vs. Anna alias Flora, IndigenousNative Female Unemployed,December 4, 1933" (Court of the NC Umtali,Criminal Cases, 1931-34, S2258). The 1927 Native AffairsAct gave NCs the same powers to punishdisobedient women thatschool head- mastershad over unrulypupils (Ranger,"Women in the Politicsof Makoni District" [n. 14 above], 17). 39 Arthur ShearlyCripps to Governorof SouthernRhodesia, December 10, 1936, S1542/A1/20,vol. 1. 40 The motivesof male guardianswho allowed women to go to townsare difficultto discernfrom official correspondence.The 1910-11 Native AffairsCommittee report

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In the course of the 1920s it also became clear that housing was another crucial variable in urban female class formationin Southern Rhodesia.41In the urban "locations,"a shortageof accommodationand women's smalleconomic means often forced single women to lodge with male workers,either singly or in a group. This gave rise to a formof domesticlabor sales knownin thevernacular as mapoto,a termthat may be translatedas "cooking pot marriage."Mapoto marriagewas a gender relationshipfree of theties (and obligations)of formalmarriage, in which bridewealthwas not paid to the woman's relatives.Once she moved in witha man and startedto work forhim (i.e., cookingfood in pots) she was his "wife."The historicalparameters of thisform of sellingdomestic servicesin thetowns of SouthernRhodesia have not yetbeen studied,but it seemsto be more closelyanalogous to the informal"mine marriages" on the Copperbeltthan to any of the formsof prostitutionso precisely delineatedin White's studiesof colonial Nairobi.42 A comparisonbetween Salisburyand Bulawayo (the colony's main industrialcity in thisperiod) is instructiveon othermethods of organizing the sales of domesticlabor around the state's restrictivehousing policies.For example,there was a groupof femaleproperty owners in the Bulawayo location in the years up to 1930 who built and owned their own houses. Althoughsome may have rentedrooms to prostitutes,they were said to be respectablewomen, and theiraccess to housingprecipi- tated the developmentof a nascentfemale petty bourgeoisie.43 In Salis-

alleged that husbandswere sharingthe proceedsof theirwives' urban prostitution.In a governmentdebate on the 1916 adulteryordinance, it was similarlyalleged thatfathers were sendingdaughters out to prostitutethemselves and bringmoney back to pay family taxes; governmentofficials continued to make this allegation(1910-11 Native Affairs CommitteeReport, sec. 14; SouthernRhodesia LegislativeCouncil Debates, 1914-19, May 3, 1916; Ministerof Native Affairs,Southern Rhodesia LegislativeCouncil De- bates, 1936, vol. 1, col. 588). 41 See Teresa Barnes,"Differential Class Experiencesamongst African Women in Co- lonial Harare, Zimbabwe, 1935-70" (paper presentedat the Conferenceon Women and Gender,University of Natal, January1991). 42 Parpart,"Sexuality and Power on the Zambian Copperbelt"(n. 13 above), 118; Luise White,"Domestic Labour in a Colonial City: Prostitutionin Nairobi, 1900- 1952," in Stichterand Parpart,eds. (n. 2 above); White,The Comfortsof Home (n. 4 above), 6. With her recentbook, Whitehas challengedhistorians of urban Africato matchher analysisof domesticlabor and class formation.It may be noted,meanwhile, that in contrastto the situationin Nairobi, and contradictingWhite, the archivalmaterial on Salisburyin the late 1940s beginsto containreferences to pimping.See the series "Life in Harare Township,"in AfricanWeekly, esp. the article"Shameful Practices at IndustrialSites .. ," May 18, 1949; R. R. Willcox, "Report on a VenerealDisease Sur- vey of the Africanin SouthernRhodesia" (Salisbury,1949), 41-42; Barnesand Win (n. 2 above), chap. 10. 43 StevenThornton, "The Strugglefor Profit and Participationby an EmergingAfri- 9 can Petty-bourgeoisiein Bulawayo, 1893-1933," in Societiesof SouthernAfrica, vol. (Universityof London, 1980); LynetteJackson, "Uncontrollable Women in a Colonial AfricanTown: Bulawayo Location, 1893-1958" (M.A. diss., Columbia University, 1987), 37-42; England (n. 17 above), 45-46; Lovett(n. 3 above), 32.

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burythere is no traceof anysuch class of femaleresidents, but there is evidencethat some women were allowed to registerfor rented accom- modationin theirown names through the 1930s. One suchwoman was EmmaMaGumede, an entrepreneuroflegendary proportions who in the early1930s mixed the work of a madamwith brewing beer and later ran one of thefew grocery stores in thelocation. She was able to renttwo housesin herown name and was saidto be one ofthe first people in the locationto owna car.44It doesappear that even without secure access to accommodation,therefore, some Salisbury women were able to manip- ulatehousing restrictions to theiradvantage. Thus, in 1930,three male residentsof thelocation complained,

Wenow findthat the women without husband [sic] and who earn theirmoney by immoralways are the controllinginfluence. She choosesher man for the time being, only a boywith money, and sendshim along to registerthe house in hisname, and-as longas he pleasesher-he remainsthe registered occupier of thehouse. Thishas beengoing on forsome time.... The menare controlled by thewomen. They hang around the Beer Hall and enticethe youngmen to theirhuts. A womantakes a houseand it is registered in thename of herman. She stayswith him for a whileand then takesanother man with a house.45

Theperiod up to thelate 1920s may very well also havebeen the good old daysas faras Africanprostitution in Salisburywas concerned.The 1916 adulteryordinance only applied to marriedwomen, and therewas no otherlegislation until the 1927 NativeAffairs Act that could be used to deal withprostitutes. In addition,the municipality generally turned a blindeye to Africanprostitution in and aroundtown. When specific complaintswere made, town officials notified the police.46 In 1929 a whitemunicipal employee alleged that town officials did noteven sup- portan increasein antivenerealdisease measures and thatthey were of theopinion that "prostitutes at theLocation were a necessity,as a safe- guardfor the white women."47 In 1928 thenative commissioner in Salisburycommented on theneed foradditional accommodation for employed Africans in town,noting 44 Interviewswith Mrs. JoannaScott Mwelase, May 31, 1989; Mr. L. Gutsa, No- vember 5, 1988; Mr. L. C. Vambe,February 17, 1989; Mrs. M. Chagaresango,February 21, 1989; Mrs. B. Charlie,February 21, 1989 (conductedby myselfand EverjoyceWin). 45 Oral evidenceof JohnMoeketsi, Simon and Bartonto Native AffairsCommission of Inquiryinto the SalisburyNative Municipal Location, 1930, 22, 63, S85. 46 See Town Rangerreports, 1923-29; Medical Officerof Health reports,1924-29, LG51/1; LG51/1/7. 47 Miss M. Waters,Organizing Instructress, Department of Native Education,memo to Directorof Native Education,May 11, 1929, S246/532.

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that"there are so manyprostitutes [in the municipal location] that all the respectablenatives refuseto live and bringtheir families up there."48 Brisksales of domesticlabor, indeed! Also in 1928, the colony'smedical directorexpressed the contradictionsof the settlerstate policy on prostitution.On one hand, he saw prostitutionas a necessaryevil whenthere were so manyurban men livingapart fromtheir families. On the other hand, venerealinfection from contact with Africans was one of thegreat phobias of thewhite population, and thestate therefore had to be seen to be doing somethingto protectthe whitepublic health.Neatly balancing theseopposites, he laid the blame forvenereal disease on a superhuman creaturehe called "the travellingnative prostitute": "So far,in thecourse of our [antivenerealdisease] campaign,we have elicitedsome interesting facts,one of these being the greatdifficulty which existsin contending with the travellingnative prostitutewho wanders around the country, changingher name, in some cases, at everytown. These people are difficultto traceand controlbut we are doing our bestand gettingthem by degree.... I can assureyou thatwe have our machineryfor getting hold of thesewomen, and prosecutingthem for conveying infection."49 Here, women's exerciseof mobility,sexuality, and cash-earningability were beingclearly articulated as a crimeagainst the state.Women were strug- glingto allocate theirlabor as theysaw fit.The 1920s were thedecade in whichthe battlelines of such urban struggleswere definitivelydrawn.

"To meet the insistentrequests of the nativecommunity":50 Africanwomen and the 1936Native RegistrationAct Reportsfrom the early1930s indicatethat capitalism had thoroughly penetratedSouthern Rhodesian African households. For example,tradi- tional methodsof producingdomestic items were almostnonexistent in the Goromonzi district,and by 1931 even rural women's methodsof food preparationhad been largelytransformed as theysold theirgrain and bought it back ground.51This degree of dependenceon the cash economywas unfortunategiven the difficultiesthat were to beset rural

48 Annualreport of the NC Salisbury,1928, 3, S235/506. 49 UnderSection 19 ofthe Public Health Act of 1924,it was possibleto notifygov- ernmentauthorities that a personwas knowinglyconveying a venereal infection, but thereis no recordthat anyone was so prosecuted("Report on meetingof prevalence of VenerealDisease in SouthernRhodesia," 7-12, S1173/220). 50CNC Carbutt,Native Affairs Conference, 1933, 76, S1564. 5s Annualreport of the NC Goromonzi,1931, S235/509. Women's increasing pur- chaseof fashionableclothing was also a frequentmatter of comment;the other side of thecoin was shownby the 1932 observationthat so-called Kaffir truck merchants- thosecatering in thesegregated economy to Africancustomers-were among the wealth- iestsettlers in thecolony (NC FortUsher letter to SON Bulawayo,November 13, 1934, S1542/S12;Native Affairs Department Annual [NADA], [1932], 10:57).

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householdsin theearly 1930s. The passageof the Land Apportionment Actin 1930 institutionalizedterritorial segregation and further restricted the acreageof the reserves;in 1931 came the quadruplethreat of drought,outbreaks of seriouscattle disease, the implementation of the racially.discriminatory Maize ControlAct, and the fulleffects of the GreatDepression. By the 1930s a fewurban women were earning money in formal employment:at the time of the 1936 census,approximately 6 percent of theAfrican women in Salisburywere formal wage workers.52 They were spurredto seek urbanemployment by economicproblems, but social motiveshad begunto operateas well.As one well-educatedworker said in 1932, "I had a certainamount of trainingas a nursebut was unable to getwork as a hospitalnurse. I am quitesatisfied to workas a domestic servant.The conditionsunder which I workare quiteall right.I think othergirls would like to workin town.If we workin Europeanhouses we learnhow to improveour own homes."53 Women'smobility and thedistribution of itsproceeds became even moreimportant to Africanfamilies in thedifficult times of the 1930s. Allegationsof increasing levels of prostitution abounded; typical was the commentof one official that "the wholesale manner in which the women are throwingaside all theirold habitsof decencyand flockingto the industrialareas is perfectlyappalling."54 Other officials alleged that rural familieshad begunto relyon theproceeds of urbanprostitution: "You getthe question of womenentering town from the reserves.... [Men] sendtheir daughters into town, and thistime of yearthe towns are full ofwomen. The womenat tax timeare sentin to getthe tax. They get a blanketfor mother and a coatfor father and father says, 'Thank you very much,'but there are no enquiriesas towhat she had been doing in the last fewweeks. I putthat to themeeting of the Native Association and it was receivedwith laughter. They knew it was true."55Similarly, Miss Car- oline Renhas,born in 1919, recalledthat in her girlhood,when her unmarriedsister Porina, who livedin Salisbury,returned to therural areasto visittheir parents, no questionswere asked as to how shehad

52 Figurescalculated from Native Location Superintendent'sreport, Salisbury May- or's Minutes,1934; and Reportof the Directorof Census, 1936, 100; SouthernRhode- sia Census Reports,1901-36. 53 Oral evidenceof "Amelia" to Commissionof Inquiryinto Native Female Domestic Service,S94. The teachersand nurseswho were to become prominentfigures of urban societyin the 1950s and 1960s were stillbeing trained or gettingtheir first jobs in this period; domesticworkers were the urban femaleelite until the 1950s (see Lawrence Vambe,From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe [London: Heinemann,1976], 190-91). 54 E. G. Howman, The UrbanisedNative in SouthernRhodesia (Salisbury:Institute of Municipal Accountants,1938), 6. 55 NC Salisbury,Native AffairsAdvisory Conference, 1931, 102, S235/486.

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earned the money to pay for the little bundle of presentswhich she invariablybrought along.56 An escalationin the strugglesbetween African men and women in the 1930s is evincedby theinclusion of severalsections relating to women in the 1936 Native RegistrationAct. Althoughscholarly attention has been given to aspects of this wide-rangingpiece of legislation,its firstmain objective,"To safeguardNative Society,especially its womankind,"has so far been ignored.57The act included specificprovisions meant to satisfypersistent male demands for effectiverestrictions on women's mobility.As such it representedthe further institutionalization of women as thehostages of men,as Mbilinyihas observedfor colonial Tanzania.s8 Thus thechief native commissioner stated in correspondenceon thepro- posed act in 1933, "We are endeavoringto assist the kraal natives to controltheir women."59 There were more than a few contradictoryelements in this alliance betweenAfrican men and the colonial state.60First, as TerenceRanger statesin his work on the Makoni districtin the easternregion of Man- icaland, by the late 1930s peasants were well aware that theirinterests and thoseof thestate were in manyways incompatible;yet male peasants simultaneouslysupported an alliance with the state against African women.61Second, as previouslynoted, strugglesover the proceeds of

56 Miss Caroline Renhas interview,February 27, 1989. 57 RichardGray, The Two Nations (London: OxfordUniversity Press, 1960), 154; Arrighi(n. 7 above), 346. The controlof women also had culturaland ideological di- mensions,from missionary education to the propaganda of the Native Department.Its newspaper,Bantu Mirror,added a women's columnin July1936. For the goals of mis- sionaryeducation, see ElizabethSchmidt, "Ideology, Economics, and the Role of Shona Women in SouthernRhodesia, 1850-1939" (Ph.D. diss., Universityof Wisconsin- Madison, 1987), esp. chap. 4. 58 Mbilinyi(n. 4 above), 25. s9 CNC Carbutt,Native AffairsConference, 1933, S1564. 60 Calls forpasses forwomen came frommany quarters. These includedrural "native boards," the Rhodesia AgriculturalUnion, and whiteemployers in the town of Gwelo (England [n. 17 above], 53; Ranger,"Women in the Politicsof Makoni District" [n. 14 above], 13; correspondencein S1542/N2, S482/224/39,and S482/365/39).All thiscommotion contradicts Schmidt's idea thatthe social and economicimportance of women's work in Africanfamilies was diminishingin the 1930s as the ruraldependence on wages grew.To the contrary,such evidencesuggests that in difficulteconomic times women's work was of primaryeconomic and social importance(Schmidt, "Ideology, Economics,and the Role of Shona Women in SouthernRhodesia, 1850-1939," chap. 2). 61 Researchis desperatelyneeded into the class and age profilesof the ruralpatri- archswho play such a large role in thisarticle. Unfortunately, at thispoint I can only reiteratethat therewere a numberof vocal Africanmen who demandedgreater control over women. In the meantimeit may be noted thatRanger quotes the NC Inyangain 1911: "The youngwomen are breakingup and breakingthrough all nativecustom.... The presentconduct of the missionaries[in shelteringrunaway women] fallsvery heavily

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This content downloaded from 158.121.249.50 on Tue, 28 Jul 2015 18:40:02 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions WOMEN IN COLONIAL ZIMBABWE Barnes women'smobility had perhapsbecome more important than the simple restrictionof mobilityitself. Thus, for example, the chiefs of theGor- omonzidistrict wanted the state to allowonly married women brandish- ingmarriage certificates into towns. Presumably they would be underthe moredirect exercise of what was euphemisticallytermed "tutelage" than theirunmarried sisters.62 But restricting women's freedom of movement could logicallybe expectedto also restrictthe earnings that could be sharedwith or appropriatedby relatives. A thirdcontradiction involved inthe legislation was thestate's position on prostitution.The government continuedto definethe urban activities of unattached women as immoral and continuedto styleitself as guidingAfricans forward "on thetedious journeyfrom barbarism to civilization."But the state could not turn all itsweapons on Africanprostitutes. First, the settlers thought that black menneeded constant access to blackprostitutes to wardoff the "black peril"-sexual relationsbetween black men and white women, one of the settlers'great cultural phobias. Second, officials worried that a vigorous campaignto eradicateprostitution might cause "gravediscontent" in urbancommunities. Third, as Whitehas observedfor colonial Nairobi, prostitutionwas notthe most inefficient way to provideminimal domes- ticservices to urbanmen. Last, trapped in itsown logic, the state would haveno groundsto refusea womana pass evenif she was travelingto townto engagein prostitution ifshe could prove that she had herguardian'spermission to leavehome.63 on the middle-agedand elderlynatives-the men who are the standbyof the race" ("Women in the Politicsof Makoni District,"12-13). Accordingto the SON Gwelo, the "respectablenatives" were askingthat adultery be made a crime(Mittlebeeler [n. 15 above], 123). Bozzoli (n. 4 above) writesthat in the householdstruggle with capitalism, "some will act as the defendersof the domesticdomain and ... internalstruggles will shape theircapacity to do so" (151), an observationthat should yieldfruitful results when applied to the studyof genderrelations in colonial Zimbabwe. Some men voiced oppositionto passes forwomen. In 1928 the eliteSouthern Rhodesia Native Association (SRNA) asked thatthe state abolish what it inexactlytermed "the pass laws" for women,referring to the certificatesof servicerequired under Ordinance 16 of 1901. They alleged thatAfrican police were usingthe provisionas an excuse forharassing women. Some yearspreviously, though, the SRNA had objectedto the presenceof women and girlsin town. The associationmight have merelybeen concernedto keep lower class femaleelements out of town (CNC to Secretaryof the SouthernRhodesia Native Association,October 9, 1928, S138/37; oral evidenceto the Commissionof In- quiryinto Native Female Domestic Service,1932, S94; annual reportof the NC Salis- bury,1931, S235/486). TerenceRanger, Peasant Consciousnessand GuerrillaWar in Zimbabwe (Harare: Zimbabwe PublishingHouse, 1985), 63. 62 Schmidt, Huntersand Gold-Washers" 4 63 "Farmers, (n. above), 71. To governmentofficials, the latterproblem conjured up imagesof the state appa- ratusrendered legally defenseless against armies of parentallysanctioned prostitutes (annual reportof the CNC, 1930, S138/1; JohnPape, "Black and White: The Perilsof Sex in Colonial Zimbabwe," Journalof SouthernAfrican Studies, vol. 16, no. 4 [1990]; White,The Comfortsof Home [n. 4 above], 140). While whitewomen were denied ac-

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Anotherdifficulty that the state musthave had to contendwith was the continuingdetermination of urban women to act in their own interest.Conflict over women's access to municipal beer halls in the urban locations providesan example of this determination.Beer halls were one of the fewspaces whereurban women had easy access both to men-presumably for the purposes of friendshipand to offersexual services-and to recreation.In 1922, women were prohibitedfrom en- teringthe beer hall in the Salisburylocation after5 P.M. In protest,they initiateda boycottof the facilityand "for a time"male customersjoined in.64In 1930 anotherincident was reported:"A formof adulteratedhop beeris made by thenatives in theLocation. The Location Superintendent for a short while forbade the making of this beer; immediatelythe women boycottedthe Beer Hall and the men fellinto line. The boycott lasted for two days, I believe,when the Location Superintendentcan- celled his instructions."65In 1932, the annual Conferenceof Christian Natives requestedthat the Salisburyauthorities provide "separate ac- commodationat the [beer]Halls forwomen, apart frommen." The chief native commissionercautioned Salisburyofficials that such a measure would lead to a fall of revenue fromthe beer hall; the municipality thereforedeclined to restrictthe women's access. In the 1940s, however, the state did attemptto separatefemale from male drinkersin the beer halls but simplyconcluded that "the separationof thesexes has [not]had the beneficialeffects which ... had been hoped for."66The overt and covertstruggles over women's access to beerhalls suggestseveral things: women'swillingness to confrontthe authorities over important economic issues using a varietyof tactics;the continuingwillingness of some Af- ricanmen to requestintervention from the stateagainst women's mobility; and lastly,the state's ambivalencein thatintervention. In 1936 the state,trying to come to grips with the complexitiesof urban genderrelations, compromised on a pass and registrationlaw for Africansthat sought to legislateonly a diluted "purity"in the towns. Marriedwomen, who were assumedto be underthe fullcontrol of their husbands and thereforedid not require any furtherrestriction, were

cess by means of the "ImmoralityActs" of 1903 and 1916 to sexual relationswith black men,white male legislatorsrefused to pass laws whichwould criminalizerelations betweenthemselves and black women (see correspondenceon miscegenationin S482/802/39). 64 Yoshikune,"Black Migrantsin a White City" (n. 17 above), 106. 65 Oral evidenceof JohnMoeketsi to the Native AffairsCommission of Inquiryinto the SalisburyNative Municipal Location, 1930, 22, S85. 66 Honorable Secretaryof the SouthernRhodesia MissionaryConference to Salisbury Town Clerk,July 8, 1932; CNC to SalisburyTown Clerk,September 13, 1932; Town Clerk to SouthernRhodesia MissionaryConference, September 21, 1932; Location Su- perintendentto Medical Officerof Health,July 22, 1942-all in SalisburyMunicipality file12/7/21, jacket 1.

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allowedto stayin urbanareas without any sort of pass. The act did try to restrictsome women, however: single women, like unemployed men, neededa "townpass" to entera town.Section 8 of thelegislation was clearlyaimed at them:

Section8. An officerwho is authorizedto issuevisiting passes may refuseto issuethe pass ifon satisfactoryevidence he has reasonto believethat the applicant- (a) is a personof loose or immoralcharacter, or of idleor va- granthabits, having no lawfulpurpose to performwithin the township; (b) is seekingto visit the township for an unlawfulpurpose or for thepurpose of sexualimmorality; (c) is a minoraccording to nativelaw and is seekingto visitthe townshipfor the purpose of evadingparental authority.67

However,both the letter and spirit of this segregationist law turned out tobe unworkable in the economy of the mid-1930s, and the state's actions beliedthe tough language of the act. In relationto urbanwomen, the state triedto come to gripswith only two segmentsof the urbanfemale population-girlsrecently arrived from rural areas and the mapoto womenof the locations. For example, a detectiveof the Bulawayo police reportedin 1935 that"when raids take place obvious confirmed prosti- tutesare left alone. Only young [single] girls are interrogated and are taken beforethe [Native Commissioner] who interrogates them individually and decideswhich ones shall be orderedout of town."68 The statealso beganto elaborateits definitionsof urbanwomen. Therewere wives (women under the control of husbands) and prostitutes

67 StatuteLaw of SouthernRhodesia (Salisbury:Government Printer, 1939), 2:77. The act compromisedbetween demands for restrictions on women and the problemsof issuingpasses to themwholesale. In 1927, the CNC had pointedout thatif an "immoral" woman had her guardian'sconsent to earn money,the statewould have to give her a pass; compulsorypasses were therefore,"impractical." The BSAP Commissioner agreedin 1935 thatenforcement would run into,"many difficulties"(S235/493, 52; BSAP Commissionerletter to CNC, July19, 1935, S235/383 [see also n. 64 above]). This anticipationof difficultiesmay have come in part fromobservation of resistanceto passes forwomen on the Rand in the 1920s and 1930s (see KatherineEales, "Patri- archs,Passes and Privilege:Johannesburg's African Middle Classes and the Question of NightPasses forAfrican Women, 1920-1931," in Holding Their Ground: Class, Local- ityand Culturein 19th and 20th CenturySouth Africa,ed. Phil Bonneret al. (Johannes- burg: Ravan Press,1989]). For SouthernRhodesian reactions, see Barnes,"To Raise a Hornet'sNest" (n. 2 above). For allegationsof police misbehaviorand rape charges,see S235/486, 102; BSAP Commissionerletter to CNC, July19, 1935, S235/383; BSAP Commissioner,Circular Instruction no. 26/37,S1542/A1/20, vol. 2. 68 DetectiveSergeant Fitzgerald, Bulawayo BSAP,staff memo "Immoralityby young nativefemales," 1935, S1222.

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(cannon fodderin the fightagainst "the black peril") but, after1936, there were also "concubines"-the mapoto women-who fell some- where in betweenthe worthyand the wicked. If the concubineswould only followthe state'surging to solemnizeor registertheir relationships with men,legalistic concerns would be satisfiedand the small armiesof women in the towns could be maintainedwith a minimumof action.69 In 1936 the CNC asked forestimates of thenumbers of "concubines" in the Salisburyand Bulawayo locations,but cautionedhis minionsthat "some of thesewomen may be respectablefrom a Native point of view and no actionwhich may cause unnecessaryresentment should be taken in gettingthis information."The replyfrom the Salisburynative com- missionercontained the followingbreakdown of the eight hundred women residentsof the location: 150 properlymarried wives, 150 so- called respectablesingle women, 50 "professional"prostitutes, and 450 concubines.In Bulawayoit was estimatedthat out of 1,225 womenin the location,there were 300 prostitutes,200 marriedwomen, and a whop- ping725 concubines.If all these"concubines" were to marry,it would be necessaryto take action only against "the professionals"-roughlya quarterof the women of the two locations.70 The Native RegistrationAct did not come into force untilJanuary 1938, one year later than originallyplanned. Governmentcorrespon- dence from 1937 is full of instructionsto officialsthat amounted to planningits virtualnonenforcement. Instructions to the colony's police forcestated that although the purpose of theact was to keep Africans"of bad character"out of towns, those enteringon "legitimatebusiness" werenot to be interferedwith. This in itselfobviated the town pass ideal. Further,African policemen, whose officialimage had been severelytar- nishedby a numberof allegationsof rapes of Africanwomen, were also specificallyinstructed not to ask women foridentification (marriage cer- tificatesor town passes) unlessthey were underthe supervisionof Euro- pean police.71 Since Africanofficers frequently operated withoutsuch supervision,African women were thus freedof some of the harassment which the act was meantto institutionalize. In 1937 the chief medical officialin Salisburyanticipated that the pendingimplementation of the act would adverselyaffect a large pro-

69 Salisburymunicipal location superintendentto Medical Officerof Health, April8, 1940, Cityof SalisburyMunicipal File 12/7,jacket 11; Secretaryfor Native Affairsletter to Town Clerks,n.d., S482/535. The colonial stateobjected to mapoto women because theyevaded parentalcontrol and were not properlymarried-not because theywere providingcheap servicesto urban male workers.Even representativesof the metropoli- tan state defended"temporary marriage" in SouthernRhodesian towns (BritishHouse of Commons,extract from official report of May 17, 1938, S1542/A1/20,vol. 1). 70 CNC to Town Clerk,Salisbury, September 5, 1936; NC Salisburyto CNC, Sep- tember9, 1936. S1542/S12. 71 See n. 68 above.

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portionof the location women. He was mistaken.72For reasons outlined above,it seemsthat the act hardlyinterfered with the location commu- nitybut did at leasttemporarily reduce the number of new femalemi- grantsinto the town. Thus the native commissioner inSalisbury reported in 1938 thatthere was a markeddecrease in young single women coming intothe location and thatthere had also beena decreasein complaints about runawaywomen from a neighboringrural district. As forthe womenalready resident in thelocation, he solicitouslyobserved, "There was at firstsome uneasinessfelt by womenfolk in the locationwho anticipatedthat they would be undulyhampered when contemplating visitsto the ["white"areas of] Town on theirlawful and reasonable occasions.The difficultyhas beenovercome and nativewives (and families)of locationresidents are protectedfrom the inconvenience which theyfeared."73 In 1938 abouteight hundred of the 6,200 people living in the location werewomen. In thefirst six monthsof thatyear, the location superin- tendentissued permits to someof thesewomen: forty-six to stayin the locationindefinitely, thirty-one to stay for more than ten days, and eigh- teento stayfor ten days or less.One hundredthirty-four permit appli- cationswere refused.74 The smallnumber of applications(229) and of whatmight be calledpermanent residence permits (forty-six) for more thaneight hundred women suggests that applying for a permitwas an act thatmost women chose to ignore.This exemplifies the way in which,by thelate 1930s,the fight to restrictwomen's mobility was alreadydevel- opingnew levels of complexity.

Conclusion Many moreaspects of the historyof colonialZimbabwe must be researchedbefore we can developa moreaccurate and nuancedunder- standingof thechanging relationships between African people, metro- politancapital, and thecolonial state and theways in whichthese were refractedthrough the prisms of class formation and gender. Nonetheless,

72 Medical Officerof Health to Town Clerk,November 18, 1937, Cityof Salisbury Municipal File 12/7,jacket 6. 73 NC Salisburyto CNC, August31, 1938, S1542/A1/20,vol. 2. This discussionof the "nonenforcement"of some colonial legislationis not meantto insinuatethat African women led easy lives in SouthernRhodesian towns. Although the statedid not use all of its resourcesto get at women,it certainlyused some. Details about urban conditions duringthis period are beyondthe scope of thisarticle, but the literatureshows just how awfulthey were (see Yoshikune,"Black Migrantsin a White City" [n. 17 above]; Lawrence Vambe,From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe [n. 54 above], and An Ill-FatedPeople [London: Heinemann,1977]; William Saidi, The Old BricksLives [Gweru: Mambo Press,1989]). 74 Salisburynative location superintendent,memo, August 27, 1938, S1542/A1/20, vol. 2.

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it is clear thatthese relationships were characterizedby significantstrug- gles over the allocationof women's labor in both ruraland urban areas. Once the colonial state began the restructuringof Africansociety, the strugglesbetween men and women developedto such proportionsthat the state itself,paradoxically, was called in to mediate.It intervenedon two levels.The firstwas to pass legislationthat sought to reinforcemale controlover women,unequivocally supporting the claimsof fathersand husbandsover wives and daughters.This legislationwas complementary to the state's generalsegregationist stance. On anotherlevel, however, all-outattacks were not launchedon themobility of women because their daily performancein the urban and miningareas of the myriadtasks of domesticlabor-cooking, cleaning,sewing, child rearing, supplementing male incomes,and providingsexual services-was vital for the repro- ductionof the migrantmale labor forceand forthe developmentof the colonial capitalismthat was predicatedon that labor. This suggestsa dialecticalrelationship between family labor and the rise of the colonial state: while the outcome of the strugglebetween men and women gen- erallysupported the developmentof capitalismby enablingthe stateto appropriatethe fruitsof familylabor, that same domesticstruggle in- creasinglyoccurred inside capitalist parameters. Some womenappear to have soughta levelof economicindependence forthemselves in defianceof both the wishes of theirmale relativesand the laws of the state.In the SouthernRhodesian political economy, mo- bilitywas the keyto thisindependence. Women exploredand developed socioeconomicoptions; Africanmen and the statewrestled to findways to appropriatethe fruitsof women's migrantlabor instead of merely restrictingtheir mobility. Despite calls frommany quarters, women were neverburdened with identity documents, registration certificates and the like; theirmobility was tacitlyacknowledged to be crucialto theirlabor. From the Salisburywomen's beer hall boycottsof the 1920s to the rock-throwingof "Anna alias Flora" in 1933, fromthe relativefreedom of mapoto liaisonsto the organizedaccumulation represented by Emma MaGumede and by the Bulawayo propertyowners, ordinarywomen constantlywrung whatevergains they could froma range of meager opportunities.In so doing,they at least bequeatheda legacyof resource- fulnessto theirdaughters.

Departmentof Economic History Universityof Zimbabwe

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